


On the Street Where You Live

by RoseisaRoseisaRose



Series: Everyday I'm Drabbling [9]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: AM or VW route, F/M, Pining, background Annette/Felix if you squint, don't actually hang around your crush's house it's not romantic, postgame, star crossed whatevers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:21:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24237982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseisaRoseisaRose/pseuds/RoseisaRoseisaRose
Summary: Ferdinand wanders the streets of Fhirdiad as a shadow of a fallen empire. He finds light at Mercedes von Martritz's window.Written for the Felannie discord drabble challenge; this week's prompt was a specific opening sentence.
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir/Mercedes von Martritz
Series: Everyday I'm Drabbling [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1649380
Comments: 17
Kudos: 24
Collections: Those Who Drabble in the Dark





	On the Street Where You Live

Ferdinand truly hadn’t meant to, this time.

He had walked down this street, and by this house, plenty of times before – in daylight, at sunset, in the morning when he could blend in with the rush of people starting their day, on quiet Sunday afternoons when he knew no one would be in. But that night, he hadn’t meant to walk here. He hadn’t meant to walk anywhere. He had just known he couldn’t stay alone, in his rented room, with his tortured memories, and so he’d put on his overcoat and hat and ventured out into the night air and walked the streets of Fhirdiad without knowing where he was going.

He shouldn’t have been surprised that his feet took him to Mercedes von Martiz’s house. He was disappointed in himself, however – it felt like intruding on her privacy, to stand there, across from where she lived, when he had not even the hope of an invitation. But disappointed-but-not-surprised was Ferdinand’s default emotion following the war. It would have felt strange to feel anything else.

He moved to Fhirdiad because he could not return home. He was a disgraced general from a defeated army, a fallen noble who had failed his people and his title. In Fhirdiad no one knew him; no one looked for him. He could get work that lasted a fortnight, or a month, and he could move on. That was how he kept himself alive.

It wasn’t until he had ended up in the service of an unseemly merchant whose name was suspiciously familiar that his thoughts turned to his former classmate. The man’s complaints of his ungrateful adopted daughter, squandering away her goodwill and privilege on a saccharine dream of operating an orphanage, stirred something in the back of his mind. A conversation he’d had with Mercedes before the war, huddled together outside the annual winter ball, too many glasses of champagne between the two of them and his jacket hanging off her shoulders loosely as she shivered in the cold. It went from a faint but pleasant memory to the only conversation Ferdinand could think about, the only injustice he could make right in a world where he no longer had power. He had not felt guilty to when he stole from his employer – he was already a disgraced nobleman, “honorable thief” might be a step up. And no one looked twice at a guardsman roaming the halls at night, slipping into libraries and studies when no one else was around. His contract there had lasted two months; double his usual tenure before he sought employment elsewhere. He left with a secret dossier of papers that more than justified his extra time.

If only he could think of a way to give them to her.

Ferdinand touched at the letters, concealed in his left breast pocket, resting against his heart. He always carried them with him. He’d thought of every way to give them to Mercedes. Just leaving them on her doorstep seemed threatening. Every letter he tried to pen got bogged down with back-story and explanation and meaninglessness until he wasn't sure what he was even trying to say. He had walked up to her door more times than he knew, but could never bring himself to knock. She would turn him away. She would not want to see him. He could not bear it.

A peal of laughter broke him out of his reverie, and Ferdinand looked up to the one lighted window, realizing suddenly that it was open. He could hear Mercedes’s voice drifting out the window; she must have just walked into the room. Perhaps she had been dining with her companion and only now retired to the sitting room.

“Annie, I think he  _ likes _ you,” she was saying, her laughter in every word.

“He doesn’t! He doesn’t. He’s teasing me, I know he is.” He recognized the voice, one of his classmates, probably. It was a voice from long ago. He’d forgotten so many.

“Who sends that many flowers when they’re  _ teasing _ , is what I want to know.”

“A villain, that’s who. He’s always been like – oh! Mercie. You left the curtains open, did you mean to?”

“Oh yes,” Mercedes said, her voice musical, like springtime. “I was just letting some air in, but I guess it’s getting quite chilly now. Hold on.”

She appeared at the window, and Ferdinand looked up at her in awe. The candlelight framed her face, making her soft around the edges, like a painting, like a dream. She looked down into the street and he realized he should step out of the light, that anyone could see him standing there, but he was frozen to the spot. She did see him, and she tilted her head to the side as she looked at him.

She gave him a smile and a wave, one stranger to another on a chilly spring night, wishing him safe travels to wherever he was going to.

And then she closed the curtains and the light was gone.

Ferdinand turned and willed his feet to find a new street to walk down, a new neighborhood to get lost in, a new life to fade into. His letters for Mercedes burned a hole against his heart. She probably didn’t want them. She certainly didn’t want  _ him _ . He had little reason to come back.

If only his feet could learn a different path to tread. But he’d learned long ago that it did not do to lament all the paths he could have gone, but did not.

Perhaps next time he would be brave enough to knock. He would be brave enough to hear her reject him. He would give her the letters and leave Fhirdiad altogether. It would be the noble thing to do. And somewhere, locked deep within his heart, he still wanted to be noble.

**Author's Note:**

> On the Street Where You Live is a better song than I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face and Henry Higgins can eat dirt.
> 
> [ Catch me on twitter. ](https://twitter.com/Rose3Writes)


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